Toll money collected at the George Washington Bridge and other Hudson River crossings is being used by the Christie administration to prop up New Jersey’s overburdened and underfunded transportation fund in a move questioned by Port Authority lawyers in late 2010 as being outside the legal scope of the agency’s authority, according to dozens of emails, confidential memos and internal reports obtained by The Record.

The $1 billion renovation of the Pulaski Skyway, a state road, is being funded through toll money collected by the Port Authority.

Still, Christie officials pressed the agency to find a way to give $1.8 billion to New Jersey, even though several high-level Port Authority officials expressed concern that the projects it would fund — repairs to four North Jersey roads including the crumbling Pulaski Skyway — have tenuous connections to the Port’s cross-Hudson network.

Laws prohibit the agency from spending money on projects outside its transportation network unless they are specifically approved by lawmakers in both New Jersey and New York. But Christie announced the funding in early 2011 without seeking legislative approval or getting Port Authority lawyers to sign off on the move.

Closure coming

Beginning April 12, the two northbound travel lanes of the Route 1&9 Pulaski Skyway (toward Jersey City) will be closed for about 24 months for a bridge deck rehabilitation project.

Motorists will continue to be able to travel in the two southbound lanes of the skyway (toward Newark) during the construction.

About 40,000 vehicles that typically travel northbound on the skyway daily, including 9,600 from 6 to 9 a.m. will need have to find alternative routes.

Suggested alternatives include the New Jersey Turnpike Newark Bay-Hudson County Extension (Route 78) eastbound lanes, where the shoulder will be converted into a third travel lane during morning and evening peak travel periods; and the Route 1&9 truck route, where traffic signals will be adapted and entrance-ramp improvements will help accommodate additional traffic heading toward Jersey City and New York City.

Source: New Jersey Department of Transportation

Instead, through a quietly orchestrated series of moves following the announcement, the Port Authority approved the payment by eventually saying the improvements would enhance access to the Lincoln Tunnel, even though all four stretches of road were miles from the crossing into Manhattan.

“As the governor made clear, this part of transportation funding was also critical in helping to protect New Jersey’s equitable treatment by ensuring money intended for investment in New Jersey stayed dedicated to New Jersey transportation projects,” Christie spokes­man Kevin Roberts said Friday. He also said the money “secured long-overdue and critical investments, upgrades, and repair of infrastructure projects that are essential to the state and regional economy and the public’s safety.”

It’s another example of Christie’s relying on tolls, not tax increases, to prop up transportation spending in New Jersey. Tolls and fares — what Christie has referred to as “user fees” — have been raised on the New Jersey Turnpike, Garden State Parkway, Hudson River crossings and NJ Transit buses and trains during his administration to fund projects throughout the state, even if they have little connection to the roads where the money comes from.

How a connection is defined could be a problem when it comes to the $1 billion renovation of the Pulaski Skyway and the three other New Jersey road projects being funded by the Port Authority. Agency lawyers repeatedly pointed to legislation and precedent that prohibited the kind of spending being pushed for by New Jersey.

They warned that the move could be judged “ultra vires” — beyond the powers of the Port Authority.

And the assistant general counsel of the agency wrote of the requirements: “These prerequisites are grounded in bi-state statutes as well as contracts or covenants with bondholders and may not be waived, altered or ignored under any circumstances.”

The explosive e-mails and text messages, obtained and first reported by The Record, sparked a political firestorm that extended far beyond New Jersey and Fort Lee. For full coverage, click here.

But with New Jersey’s transportation fund on the verge of insolvency, the pressure didn’t let up. So a creative solution was found.

The Port Authority’s legal team branded the New Jersey-owned Pulaski Skyway, Wittpenn Bridge, Route 139 and Portway New Road as “access roads” to the Lincoln Tunnel — even though the roads are miles from the tunnel and are not typically used to reach it, according to transportation experts.

“The Pulaski Skyway was built to connect the rest of New Jersey to the Holland Tunnel,” said Martin E. Robins, director emeritus at Rutgers University’s Voorhees Transportation Center. He added that the skyway “would be a very indirect route to use to get to the Lincoln Tunnel, and I doubt very much that many people would take that route.”

Indeed, the Pulaski is a three-mile bridge that feeds cars from Newark into the Holland Tunnel in Jersey City. For reasons that date back to Depression-era laws, the Port Authority is not legally authorized to build access roads to the Holland Tunnel, whose construction preceded the formation of the agency.

But it can for the Lincoln Tunnel.

The agency’s legal justification has not received much scrutiny until now, partly because the only hint of it is in the fine print of agency documents and it has not been discussed publicly. But the records show it carries risk.

In a confidential internal memo, written after the agency agreed to pay for the projects, a high-ranking attorney at the agency wrote in March 2011 that the justification could make the agency more vulnerable to a lawsuit by the bondholders and investors who lend the agency money. Those bondholders, who are repaid through revenue generated from tolls, are assured in official documents that the money will be used on properly authorized projects.

The Port Authority defended the spending on the New Jersey roads as proper last week. So did Christie’s office, which has exerted tight control over the Port Authority in ways that have prompted controversy.

Christie stocked the agency with more than 50 patronage employees during his first two years in office. His allies there shut access lanes to the George Washington Bridge last year, creating a traffic jam apparently to punish the mayor of Fort Lee. And they also led a secretive campaign to quickly push through toll hikes by limiting public input at hearings in 2011 — months after Christie redirected the $1.8 billion to New Jersey.

A New Jersey legislative investigative committee has issued subpoenas for records related to the toll increases as it looks into whether the Port Authority, an independent regional transportation agency with a $8.2 billion annual budget, was used as a political tool. The committee is primarily focused on the lane closures that gridlocked Fort Lee for five mornings in September.

Federal investigators are also probing the lane closures and the overlapping public and private interests of just-resigned Port Authority Chairman David Samson.

And a report on the lane-closure controversy that was commissioned by Christie’s office and was released last week recommended restructuring the Port Authority through a bi-state commission that would recommend reforms and “ensure its independence and professionalism.”

Redirected funds

The money for the Pulaski was freed up when Christie ended the Hudson River rail tunnel project, known as ARC, on Oct. 27, 2010, citing potential cost overruns.

The debate over whether, and how, the Port Authority could shift its contribution to New Jersey roads spanned the following five months and involved at least three agencies and the governor’s office. In the end, a complicated, highly technical resolution was found to send the money to New Jersey, according to the internal emails, correspondence and memorandums obtained by The Record.

The Port Authority’s $3 billion contribution to the ARC tunnel was originally meant as a token for New Jersey, to offset the agency’s ballooning investment at the World Trade Center in Manhattan. When the tunnel was canceled, the Christie administration laid claim to the money, saying it should be directed to New Jersey-focused projects.

The Port Authority, a transportation agency that has a monopoly on Hudson River vehicular crossings and the region’s major airports and seaports, has for decades been used to fund pet projects that don’t appear to fit with its original mission. It has built industrial parks, a garbage incinerator and office buildings, including the World Trade Center.